Columnist Willem Lange usually strikes me as a critical thinker and a fairly interesting writer. However, in his article “Pearl Harbor’s legacy,” (Jan. 21 Times Argus/Rutland Herald) in referring to JFK’s assassination, he labels those opposing his perspective as “loonies with time on their hands.” This name-calling method seems to be used quite often to shut down any debate on certain topics. As a matter of fact, this method seems to have worked quite successfully for more than a decade by the U.S. government and its cooperative mainstream media and others, with the words “conspiracy theorists” used to thwart any serious objective debates, especially on critical issues.

As for Mr. Lange’s statement “But 9/11 remains an open wound; our national consciousness still hasn’t been able to wrap itself around the motives of the men who took flying lessons ...” I believe that the “open wound” in “our national consciousness” has little to do with the motives of men who took flying lessons. It has much more to do with what were the motives of the men who caused the 12-second straight-down controlled demolition-type collapse of each of the three WTC skyscrapers on 9/11.

As for motives, we would do well to consider what U.S. foreign and domestic policies followed from the events of 9/11 and which continue to this day, including the consequent induced fear that paralyzes the national psyche. We now are a country of torture, drone assassinations, lost civil liberties and shock-and-awe for countries with oil and other resources that the multinational corporations covet.

In short, we have a world turned upside-down thanks to the unexamined, uninvestigated and covered-up events of 9/11.

Accepting unquestioningly the official 9/11 conspiracy and proceeding to parrot it is not critical thinking. We need all the truly critical thinking we can collectively muster. Let’s stop labeling those who question our government’s actions either in JFK’s assassination or the 9/11 murders and have a real debate on ultra-serious issues while we still have a voice.